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Seated on a low, old stone, long and rectangular like a wall that has either slowly been absorbed by the earth, or worn away to a nub by the sun, wind, and rain over decades and more. I’m glancing out over some of the fresher tombstones far away, down a slope, but I gaze more acutely at those older—much older—nearer to me, beneath a magnificent Magnolia tree and a few cedars. Thinking about the artificiality of time. Looking at all these ancient tombstones, headstones, grave markers: chipped, battered, cracked, broken in half, broken in pieces and chunks, toppled, lying crooked in the dirt and low grass, some leaning like that famous tower in Italy; words once cleanly, neatly etched into an also, once-smooth surface, now illegible, indecipherable, worn away, effaced, obliterated by wind, sun rain, time, time, time…. But what is time?

We all die a thousand million deaths, incalculable deaths, dying every day despite others’ attempts at preservation. Slowly, slowly worn away, a millionth of a meter at a time. Our only hope: to be continually engraved—the words by which we are to be remembered—into that stone until there be nothing left to etch those final words into, or no hand to etch our names, and then, and only then, will we truly be dead, gone and forgotten.

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There seems to me something disingenuous about all these towns, streets, and rivers named with the Native Americans’ language, names which the natives once used, in these places they once called home. Words which are foreign to us, and were foreign to our ancestors who pulled there boats up on these shores, but which fell from the mouths of the natives like apples fall from an apple tree, or the way an oak tree arises from an acorn.

Here we came and murdered them in droves, swindled and stole their land from them every time there was something on it or under it that we wanted, pushed them from one place to the next, and finally once we had roamed and despoiled the land from coast to coast we bestowed to them a few swatches of it on which they might reside. And yet their language we kept for our own! In short, everything that was possible to take from them was. Their rivers were taken—the rivers that sustained them, that they fished from, that they paddled in their canoes, that they swam and bathed in, that they named in their language which was the language of this Earth—we took the rivers for ourselves but left their language hovering ethereally—a specter from the past. We took the land from them—the land that they roamed far and wide on, the land that they farmed peaceably, sustainably, and with great love of, the land that they hunted on, the land that they built their homes on, the land they named in their tongue—we took it from them, and kept those names too.

The image, and if not the image, a name or word, of the Native American is emblazoned on everything from banks, to sport teams, to motor vehicles. One can find it on clothing, cups, bowls, keychains, shot glasses, toasters, tooth brushes, bracelets, any bloody knick-knack that can be sold so that these honest, American corporations can turn a profit. And if that isn’t bad enough, there are still oil and mining companies today trying to remove protections on the Natives’ lands in order that they may exploit them.

In short, we’ve transformed this proud race of humans into ghosts, and we pay false homage to them by naming our towns, rivers and roads after them, and by marketing junk in their name.

Fine consolation.

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“When you come to Savannah you going to have a good time,” sings the man in the park, as he folds his palm fronds, on a bench, beneath a tree.

I have concluded that he is correct.

Spent the day strolling around rather aimlessly. As perfect a day as there could be for it: sunny, cloudless sky, warm, dry, a bit windy, though pleasantly so for walking. I stop to read a sign in the square where the man is singing and folding his palm fronds. It is a plaque to commemorate the life of Tomo Chi-Chi, a member of the Creek Indian Nation. According to the sign post, he helped the English in the founding and settlement of Georgia, and was an “indispensable friend” to them. In return he received a thirty foot tall burial marker and an historical signpost recognizing this “indispensable friendship.” Since then, the Natives have been massacred, had their land stolen from them, and been pushed onto reservations. To borrow a well used cliché, he would be rolling over in his grave if he knew the atrocities committed against his people since his death.

I’m sitting on the cathedral steps writing these words and thinking of the atrocities the church has committed in its time—from The Crusades, to the KKK, and to certain discriminatory legislative measures passed in some states very recently. I’m thinking of the atrocities that continue around the world in the name of whatever religion, or by whatever government. The whole past of humanity is steeped in violence and bloodshed. Thousands of years of it, and thousands more to come, unless we blow ourselves to ashes before then.

Just now a couple walks up the steps and the husband curses reading the sign, “NO TOURING. WORSHIP IN PROGRESS.” Yes, you ignorant halfwit, the cathedral, while being quite old, is still a cathedral, which means that services may still be held there despite its status as historical landmark. It is something more than just a name to cross off your list of “Things To Do In Savannah.” It has a life of its own. There is a community that circulates in and around and through it, like blood beating in a heart, surging through vein and artery. Just because you are not a part of it, that you are a particle foreign to the stream of bodies regular to it, does not mean that it does not exist, or not take place. Come back tomorrow, or don’t come back at all. The cathedral will still stand, indifferent, unyielding, its people still coming and going, and, likely, other tourists coming and going as well, AT THE ASSIGNED TIMES. But, the cathedral, the cathedral sees you and laughs. A knowing chuckle.

Cycling back to Alex’s, I stop at Forsyth Park to stretch out in the grass, read a bit, watch the people there—some tanning, some napping, some reading, most conversing in groups, some playing frisbee, one girl playing with a bubble wand, many sitting on benches, many more in the grass, and the consistent traversal of so many more along the central artery that bisects the park and connects Gaston Street and Park Avenue at either end. A jovial scene, with the sun shining, the grass green, the temperature fine. A fitting way to end the day’s wanders, by not wandering at all, but just sitting still, reveling in the atmosphere around me. Peace can be easy to find, when you stop looking.

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In Savannah, enjoying a waffle—lemon curd & raspberries—at Mirabelle, where a friend works part-time. Outside, at a very French table, the sun blazes in and out behind clouds. I would like more clouds. Sidewalk palm tree drooping a bit. Listless. Can’t imagine summers here. Enormous double-spire cathedral across the street—St. John the Baptist. Tourists sitting on its steps looking at maps, looking at phones, thinking about where to next, what next to do, pointing in one direction then another. Tourists on this side of the street taking pictures of the cathedral and the people on its steps with phone and camera-phone. Crowds flowing into and out of it like breath. The cathedral breathing them in, breathing them out changed. Another memory to be forgotten, pictures taken to keep the memory vaguely fresh, mildly stale, preferably not molded or forgotten completely (but what harm in forgetting?). A woman stands by a wrought-iron gate in a wall surrounding a compound next to the cathedral, looking lost and impatient. A couple of vagabonds walk by: he, smoking a cigarette, and she, carrying a gallon of water, backpack on, walking her—their?—dog. Horse-drawn carriages moseying along the streets. Tourists. Larger trolleys—the people inside, heads turning one way and then the other, curious, confused—doing the same thing, a disembodied voice pointing out something or another, garbled, nebulous, impossible to make out, emanating from its general vicinity. Tourists, tourists everywhere. The streets and sidewalks are saturated with them. They’ve been swept in by the late March tides and who knows when they’ll be swept out again. I talk like I am a local, yet I am anything but. I am a ghost. I go by unnoticed, unremarked. I am that stone bench which nobody sits on. When I leave there will be no trace, because I was never there. Nor am I here. The stone bench will turn to dust, and the cathedral will crumble, but I will remain.